New York’s first measles death in 30 years.
A child in Lewis County, New York, has died in the state’s measles outbreak. State and county health officials announced the death on November 2nd and called it New York’s first known measles-associated death in more than 30 years. They haven’t released the child’s age, vaccination status, or cause of death. They’ve asked for the family’s privacy.
Governor Kathy Hochul called the death “a devastating reminder of what’s at stake when Washington deliberately erodes decades of progress.” New York’s record matters more to this story, though, because the state ended non-medical vaccine exemptions in 2019, years before Washington started rewriting the childhood schedule.
What changed after New York ended non-medical exemptions?
In June 2019, during the Brooklyn outbreak, New York ended religious exemptions from school vaccine requirements. The law covers children in public, private, and religious schools alike. In the four states that fully repealed non-medical exemptions, kindergarten MMR coverage rose 4.0 percentage points more than in states that kept them. Medical exemptions rose by only 0.4 points.
Outside New York City, coverage rose 5.5 points in private and religious schools, against 0.9 points in public schools. Before the law, the average private or religious school had 84.1% of its students fully vaccinated, while public schools averaged 97.6%. By the 2021-22 school year, private and religious schools had reached 89.9%, still 8.6 points behind public schools.
Schools that don’t check, and children who aren’t in school.
New York’s law depends on schools checking records, and three Amish schools in New York don’t require proof of vaccination. The state fined them a combined $118,000. Amish parents and the schools sued, arguing the law violates their religious freedom. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit upheld the law on June 30, 2026, after the Supreme Court sent the case back for another look.
Homeschooled children never appear in school vaccination records. The state’s data also miss some private and religious schools. They were nearly four times as likely as public schools to be dropped from the data for incomplete reporting, so the gap may be wider than the averages show.
New York has reported at least 218 measles cases this year. Most came after August, in about 10 upstate counties. Amish communities, where vaccination rates tend to be lower, have been hit hard. The New York clusters appear linked to larger Amish outbreaks in Ohio and Pennsylvania.
In Lewis County, all 15 cases reported through October 14th were in unvaccinated people. The first 11 cases were all in the town of Lowville, and none of the children attended public school. Officials haven’t said which community these families belong to. The 2019 law covers private and religious schools, but it doesn’t cover homeschooling.
Did federal vaccine changes cause this outbreak?
In August, President Trump signed an executive order that recommends splitting MMR into three separate shots. The FDA hasn’t licensed those single-disease vaccines.
No one has reported that a Lewis County family delayed or declined a shot because of anything federal officials said. The national slide in vaccination rates also started before the 2025 federal changes. Among U.S. children with regular medical care, the share who got their first MMR dose on time fell from 79.9% in 2021 to 76.9% in 2024. Johns Hopkins has counted 5,053 cases in 45 states and D.C. this year through October 30th. It’s the most measles cases since 1991.
Who can reach unvaccinated families?
During the 2018-19 outbreak in Williamsburg, New York City combined community outreach, easy access to shots, and enforcement. First-dose MMR coverage among children aged 1 to 4 rose from 79.5% to 91.1%. It cost the city health department $8.4 million.
Governor Hochul’s Executive Order 65, signed October 5th, lets pharmacists give MMR to children 2 and older and adds paramedics and midwives as vaccinators. It expires on November 4th, and Hochul hasn’t yet announced an extension.